Project Images

Storefront Water Intrusion Testing | Los Angeles

We were called out by this client to a beautiful Los Angeles Area beach house because the storefront glazing system was leaking. Initially, this building looked flawless, on its face that is. After a few minutes of walking this project we had a good idea of how to test.  We quickly determined that water had in fact been entering the building from both horizontal and vertical mullions, but needed to test and verify. Storefront Water Intrusion Testing is a service we provide, and a great deal of it.

This was a big project. The amount of glass (it wraps the front facade) makes getting around this building a real trying task. Leave it to the the Water Intrusion Specialist team to figure the very best and most effective way to manage this and test for active water intrusion.

Water Testing Storefront

With our Storefront Water Intrusion Testing, we would test from the bottom to the top. Utilizing the spray-racks ability to sit flat, like testing roofs. Our Test Technicians would manage the hoist used to move the rack up and down while our ground crew managed the water flow at the bottom.

The test would take the entire day with testing in increments of 15 minutes.  Obviously this did not include the repositioning of the rack system.

On the interior, as requested by the contractor, we were asked to create a negative air chamber, or at least a modified version of one.  This was done for exploratory purposes.  However, the owner and contractor still wanted to see the difference between simple static pressures and negative pressure tests.

Moisture intrusion testing and Results

The chamber was made and utilized on a smaller section of glass. All things considered, this method would produce results fairly quickly. And it did.
Moisture intrusion or Leaking, was observed throughout the glass facade from the bottom to the top. And just about any glass to frame connection. The use of thermography (a fancy way of saying using an infrared camera) was essential in discovering water intrusion and leaking throughout the home, that was not visible to our naked eyes alone. These areas included connections of the storefront to the ceiling and walls throughout. Secondary water intrusion of this LA beach home was also observed within the deck system. This area was not originally known to leak but was noted as an important discovery that merits further investigation by the Contractor.

Needless to say this Storefront Water Intrusion Testing helped the contractor to better understand his full Scope of Work after we were finished testing. Moreover, it made his task easier and probably was able to produce a more accurate estimate to his client for the repairs needed.

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